Would you buy this stock? Check the side bar dollar amounts. This stock looks like a roller coaster and is now worth, as of June 4, 2013, $1.46 a share. What could be causing this stock so much pain, in a cycle where stocks have normally done real well? Why is this stock technically a penny stock? This is a graph of Star Scientific.
Perhaps an FBI investigation surrounding this stock, its CEO, the Governor of Virginia and the GOP Wannabe Governor isn’t the healthiest environment for a stock tied to the tobacco industry and dietary supplements to be in.
Currently Virginia Governor Bob McDonnell is up to his eyeballs in what could very well become a scandal that involves the mansion cook, Star Scientific, the First Lady, the daughter’s wedding reception, and perhaps the governor wanna-be, Ken Cuccinelli. There is an on-going FBI investigation of all the twists and turns involving this company as it relates to the governor. Meanwhile Star Scientific is involved in a lawsuit with the State of Virginia to go to trial in December 2013.
It’s actually difficult to follow all the tentacles of this case. The Washington Post reports that aides to Governor McDonnell had difficulty with some of the Star Scientific goings-on:
Top aides to Virginia Gov. Robert F. McDonnell (R) expressed concerns about the governor’s participation in a 2011 event at the governor’s mansion that marked the launch of a dietary supplement made by a major McDonnell campaign donor, according to newly released e-mails.
“I don’t understand this? we are doing an event with them?” McDonnell’s communications director Tucker Martin wrote the evening before the event to Mary Shea Sutherland, the chief of staff for first lady Maureen McDonnell, who had organized the luncheon.
Sutherland had asked Martin to review and approve a news release that the donor, Star Scientific, intended to distribute about the event, which was to announce the launch of Anatabloc, its new dietary supplement.
A minute later, Martin wrote to Sutherland again.
“Are we sure we can do something like this?” he asked, copying a number of other senior McDonnell aides.
McDonnell’s deputy chief of staff Matt Conrad responded to Martin quickly, promising to take the issue to the governor’s chief of staff.
“You were exactly right to be suspicious,” Conrad, a lawyer, wrote.
The documents, released to The Washington Post under a Freedom of Information Act request, provide new information about the circumstances that led the governor and his wife to open the mansion to Star, whose chief executive had paid $15,000 for the catering at the wedding of McDonnell’s daughter three months earlier.
The e-mails show that McDonnell attended the luncheon at the urging of his wife, Maureen, catching his own advisers off guard the day before the event. The governor found time to make an appearance while his office was consumed with a series of crises, including a rare earthquake and a powerful hurricane that hit the state in the week before the reception.
Efforts that the McDonnells undertook to boost Star are now the focus of an FBI inquiry. Both the governor and his wife attended the Star lunch, which was cited by investors in online postings as a reason to believe in the company despite its shaky finances.
Besides the catering, Star and its chief executive, Jonnie R. Williams Sr., have given McDonnell and his campaigns more than $120,000 in disclosed gifts and campaign contributions.
Ultimately, McDonnell’s aides signed off on a news release after it had been revised by the company to downplay the governor’s role in the event. The final release, still available on the company’s Web site, continued to tout that a gathering was being held at the governor’s mansion to discuss the science behind the pill, which did not require FDA approval.
Martin declined Monday to elaborate on his and Conrad’s concerns about the event or why it was allowed to proceed. “We will have no further comment on this event,” he said in an e-mail.
Well, I guess not! What is this snake oil deal doing so close to the governor’s mansion? We elect a governor to govern, not dabble in snake oil or trying to sell snake oil from the Governors Mansion. Meanwhile, Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli had holdings and has been the recipient of vacations from this same snake oil group. Cuccinelli has a great deal of explaining to do regarding his involvement with this company as well as the ‘rewards’ he has reaped for his association.
Time to come clean, GOP. The chief Executive Office of the Virginia is not the launch pad for get rich quick schemes nor should state business be tied to a product that lacks FDA approval. Dietary supplements? The Star Scientific situation is such a tangled web that it will take years after Governor McDonnell leaves office to unravel what really happened. That’s why governors should govern, their spouses should smile and support charity events, and leave the snake oil and get-rich quick schemes alone, at least until they are out of office.
Meanwhile, the Washington Post reported:
Talhia Tuck, a spokeswoman for Star, said in a statement that the company “neither sought nor received any special benefits from any public official.” She said the company was “glad to be a party of any effort to promote business and create jobs” in the state.
Oh bullcrap and bullfrogs! What kind of jobs were created by Star Scientific? Star Scientific has close links to the tobacco industry. Did it create field jobs? Stoop work? I would say lunch at the governor’s Mansion is a ‘special benefit.’
Is the tobacco worm going to be Virginia’s state bug?
Cooch is up to his eye balls in this also – accepting things like vacation stays and jet rides without reporting them – the stock purchase and sells. What was Williams looking for, showering these two (and possibly more) people with gifts? Who pays 15k to ones daughter for her wedding? All the while, the Commonwealth is suing the company – one has to wonder what were they thinking?
Check out the Morningstar Report. Pay particular attention to the bios on the insiders. These guys have themselves in quite a bind.
What do they want the State of Virginia to do for them? Many of the insiders are directly tied to Big Tobacco.
Is that what we want our governor’s wife to be doing? Pimping a product whose stock is worth $1.46 and is a tobacco product?
What gets to me, is that family members can be given gifts, spouses on payrolls, stipends, trips – and it all does not have to be reported. Seems like it is ripe for corruption.
Corruption begging for a place to happen.
If this isn’t illegal, then it should be.
I cannot disagree with anything you have written on this, except that it is McDonnell and Cuccinelli, not the GOP. Their involvement in this is disappointing on a number of levels. It is hard to imagine how they EVER thought this was a good idea. I was happy though to see that the governor’s staff indicated its unhappiness with this, although the protestation probably should have been more forceful.
That’s very fair.